In the last two decades, applied linguistics has abandoned the structuralist view of language as a self-contained, neutral system, in favour of a conception of language as political from top to bottom, in its structure as well as its use. This book examines the consequences of that conceptual shift, as it draws together key topics including language choice, linguistic correctness, (self-)censorship and hate speech, the performance of ethnic and national identity in language, gender politics and ‘powerful’ language, rhetoric and propaganda, and changing conceptions of written language, driven in part by technological advances.

In teaching language and politics to undergraduate and postgraduate students, I have felt my efforts hampered by the lack of a book that unites these topics and shows how they relate to the more structural aspects of language analysis as well as to the core concerns of applied linguistics. Nor did it appear that anyone was going to be rash enough to attempt such a book, given the breadth of areas that ‘language and politics’ potentially covers, and the fact that people working in some of these areas believe the rubric applies exclusively to what they do. A book like this one is bound to meet with a certain amount of adverse criticism from those who find that what they consider to be the core of language and politics is under-represented.